Will you vote for ABB for president?

February 15, 2004|by Donald Currier

Will you vote for ABB for president?

The reality of the 2004 political situation is this. The Democrats, including all of the candidates and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), have only one goal in mind for the national election. That goal is to get their party back into the White House to recover the power and perks they lost in the election of 2000. They figure they were robbed and they want revenge. Their platform has only one plank. It is ABB - Anybody But Bush.

The proof? Over the last several months the nine candidates have savaged each other with all sorts of accusations from being soft on defense, the war in Iraq, cutting or raising taxes, repealing or supporting free trade, etc. But they all say they will support the nominee whoever he is. The DNC says the same thing. How can they possibly hold such opposing views and yet agree to support the winner? Because the end game is about party power not policies for the governance of the country!

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Now, you may not like George W. Bush. You don't like the way he looks or talks or walks. You think he favors the rich and the powerful over the little guy. You think that he is a cowboy in foreign affairs. But, when you buy into the idea of ABB, you should be aware of what you are getting yourself and the country into. To illustrate, let's take the positions of the three top candidates, John Kerry, John Dean, and John Edwards.

John Kerry is a rich Bostonian and lifelong politician just like the Kennedys. I'll bet you think that no one could be more of a liberal than Teddy Kennedy. You'd be wrong. The Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) rate Kerry even more to the left than Kennedy.

Kerry has consistently voted against many national security and defense programs and is all over the place on the issue of the war in Iraq. Did you know that Kerry voted against the Gulf War in 1991 despite the fact that it was overwhelmingly supported by a coalition of most UN countries? On the other hand, he voted for the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war in 2002 and 2003 which had only limited coalition help. Then, he voted against funding for the troops and the rebuilding of these war torn countries after we had beaten the Iraqis and destroyed the Taliban.

John Kerry's voting record will be carefully scrutinized to see if his flip-flops reflect enlightened thinking or are merely cynical moves for political gain. Does that voting record make you feel comfortable in his leadership judgment particularly on national defense?

And then we have John Dean. He served several years as governor of Vermont and did a credible job in most respects. In campaigning for president, however, he grabbed on the Iraq war as a wedge issue thinking it was the route to the presidency. He is to the left of all the rest of the candidates and even the bulk of the Democrat party members. He would repeal all of the recent tax cuts thus raising everyone's taxes. He would scrap NAFTA. He would pull us out of Iraq and toss away the lives and treasure we have already invested in trying to make a democratic example for the nations of the Middle East. He didn't consider that capturing Saddam was of any value to us and he wasn't sure what to do if we caught Osama.

Do you feel comfortable with the "screamer" making decisions in the Oval Office?

Finally there is John Edwards. He presents himself as a good ol' boy populist. In fact, he is a very rich trial lawyer. Edwards has less than four years in the Senate. He has no experience in foreign affairs at all. A fresh face he is, but he is also an unknown quantity at best. At worst he would require years of on the job training to even find his way around the White House, the rest of the government and the world at large.

Does he look presidential enough and have the gravitas to carry any weight in these venues?

If you choose ABB then one of the above is your option for 2004.

Donald Currier is a Washington County resident who writes for The Herald-Mail.